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Macs With Apple Silicon
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kscherer
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Join Date: Aug 2004
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2020-06-23, 16:38

After the last iMac "update", which may happen in July (current builds are being pushed out to July 30), I predict that all new Macs will be powered by Apple Silicon and they will look like this:

July 2020: Intel iMac update (current design)
October 2020: ASx Mac Mini (new design); ASx MacBook (new design)
June 2021: ASx iMac (new design)
October 2021: ASx MacBook Pro (new design)
June 2022: ASx Mac Pro (new design)

I have no idea why I chose that timeline, other than it seems to make sense.

Processors are entirely up in the air. They may use Apple's current Ax nomenclature and share nearly identical bits, or they may slip into an Axx nomenclature and be entirely customized for MacOS. The current DTK Mac Mini is using the A12Z, but future systems are likely to have more CPU cores and possibly more GPU cores.

The current prediction is that the industrial design will take on the form and appearance of the current iPad Pro. Rounded corners, narrow bezels, square edges, etc., and I am okay with this, because the current iPad Pro is the sexiest of Apple's products.

There will be lasers!

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PB PM
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2020-06-23, 22:01

Not sure what they'd do change the Mini, make it smaller? That's really all that has ever changed with the Mini, other than going from a plastic case to aluminum.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2020-06-23, 23:14

So here's what I explained to my wife and son when they were looking at me like I was crazy squealing over the Mac Mini reveal for the DTK.

That 6Mpolygon render in Maya was running on an iPad Pro chip. That's impressive.

But on a Mac Mini *POWER SUPPLY*. The Mac Mini PSU is *internal* to that box.

Look at the PSU in a PC tower. Look at the Mac Mini.

They have got a tremendous amount of room for growth.
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kscherer
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2020-06-24, 10:19

Oh, you're damn straight they do. I'm guessing they used all the Mac Mini's regular power supply bits to keep that chip cool, and they pushed it. Hard!

Super excited.

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PB PM
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2020-06-24, 14:47

Depends on if it is the same PSU. My 2018 Mac mini hits a tweet 99-120W under full load (CPU/GPU/SSD) so that would indeed be a big power window. I doubt the Apple chips will hit that. I’m guessing they’ll be 25-35W, maybe 65W.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2020-06-24, 22:54

Yawp. Meanwhile you can buy PC tower PSUs in the 1kW range.

One of these things is not like the others...
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kscherer
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2020-06-24, 22:57

Apple's new Macs are going to crush it in terms of power consumption and performance. If Photoshop is able to sing on a device that is drawing 25W?

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- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2020-06-24, 23:04

Yeah, so here's my take on it.

A12Z pulling 25W. They can sell it in an uber-miniaturized ($$$) format at massive scale.

So what kind of power can they cram in there at 75W at a reasonable price point, when the miniaturization isn't quite so critical, and the PSU can shove as many electrons as needed?

Cripes, imagine 24 cores instead of the 8 on that A12Z. Now toss in the GPU.

Um... schwing?

And that's in a mini. iMac?

Frickin' PRO?

The mind boggles.
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PB PM
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2020-06-24, 23:40

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kickaha View Post
Yawp. Meanwhile you can buy PC tower PSUs in the 1kW range.

One of these things is not like the others...
You kind of need that kind of PSU if you are running two high end GPUs that suck down 350+W each. Under full load my desktop windows machines draws around 475W, and that's a i7 8700k, GTX 1080, 3 SDD's, 3 HDDs etc. No Mac other than a Mac Pro can come close to what a mid-range PC draws, because no other Macs are using desktop GPUs, or have more than one internal disk. Now if you throw in the power draw of all the external things you need to use your Mac, like external drives, USB/Thunderblot hubs, and such you likely are well over 200W on average as well.
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kscherer
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Join Date: Aug 2004
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2020-06-25, 11:21

But, we're really not talking about all the accessory draw. We are simple discussing what Apple can do with their processor. Look at it this way: In an iPad Pro, Apple's entry-level "Mac" CPU (A12Z) is faster than Intel's entry level Mac Mini processor (Intel 3.6GHz quad-core i5), and Apple's entry-level GPU is 4x as fast! And that comes at a significantly lower power draw, and with no fan (yes, it has a fan in the DTK, but not in the iPad Pro where all of the numbers are coming from). The point is that Apple can now boost the power and the cooling requirements to eek out every scrap of power that chip can deliver.

I'm guessing it's a lot—at the entry level—and Apple hasn't even shown us their mojo, yet!

I like this quote from Craig Federighi:

Quote:
"Even that DTK hardware, which is running on an existing iPad chip that we don't intend to put in a Mac in the future, it's just there for the transition, the Mac runs awfully nice on that system."

"It's not a basis on which to judge future Macs, of course, but it gives you a sense of what our silicon team can do when they're not even trying," he continued. "And they're going to be trying.

- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)

Last edited by kscherer : 2020-06-25 at 14:50.
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PB PM
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2020-06-25, 21:18

Wouldn't be hard to beat the Intel IGP, it hasn't been updated, other than changing names from 530-630 since 2016. I doubt the Apple GPU is going to be anywhere near what AMD and NVIDA are doing, but then again nobody is using a Mac for GPU intensive stuff, so it doesn't matter.
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kscherer
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2020-07-07, 11:24

I don't think any of us yet knows where this ends up, but Apple might be ending support for 3rd-party GPU's, and is asking developers not to underestimate their own integrated GPU's.

Quote:
"Don't assume a discrete GPU means better performance," Apple wrote. "The integrated GPU in Apple processors is optimized for high performance graphics tasks."
I suspect that Apple has put as much (if not more) effort into their GPU work than their CPU work, and that may well be the biggest surprise of this whole thing. Heck, the GPU's in the A11 and A12 are very powerful, and beat the socks off of the Imagination GPU's from previous generations. Now, don't get your undies in a wad over this. I'm not saying Apple is going to come out and strip the armor off AMD or Nvidia, but I bet they've set their sights on doing so!

- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)
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chucker
 
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2020-07-07, 11:42

I don't really think they'd bother with the Mac Pro's GPU stuff and the whole eGPU stuff a year or two ago if they're gonna ditch all that for "you can have any GPU you like, as long as it's the integrated Apple one". Like, yeah, their iGPUs might be more impressive than Intel's, but… do they really want to go through the engineering effort of competing with "Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each"? Why?
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kscherer
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2020-07-07, 11:51

I don't know. Maybe because it's always a tremendous effort for Apple to secure support from those guys considering how few they actually sell? All I'm saying is that I think they consider it to be worth their time and effort. Mac OS and Apple Silicon will be optimized for each other on every front. I'm not putting it past them to absolutely aim for Mac Pro-level integrated GPU's.

After all, they did just put all their effort into a completely redesigned, Intel-based (and very expensive) Mac Pro that is going to be very short lived.

I think the danger will be in ignoring Apple's advice and assuming they don't have the chops for it.

- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)
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Frank777
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2020-07-08, 02:04

I've seen the moaning online about being 'locked' into Apple GPUs and I don't get it. At all.

I started my Mac journey on Apple LCs, and progressed later on to a Power Mac 7200.
This was back in the day when you could slide off the cover of a Mac and see its innards with almost no effort.

For those newbies who have never see the inside of their MacBook or iMac, there are a gazillion specialized parts that together make up the machine that powers your work and home lives online. You don't care about who makes any of these parts. All you care about is that they work together to create a great user experience.

You don't even buy a TV caring about what card is powering its graphics. And putting pixels onscreen is a TV's only job.

The A-chip Macs will be released and the graphics will be benchmarked very quickly. If FCP or the Adobe suite runs poorly, it's goodbye to midrange and Pro users.
Apple hasn't spent a decade making this transition happen, just to kiss its most profitable Mac users goodbye.

The AI article is well written and explains that Apple is actually leading the pack on graphic technologies here.
And if for some reason Apple Silicon can't match graphics on the PC a few years down the road, it will take little effort to revert back to supporting them.

How does Apple - or its users - lose long-term on this bet?
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chucker
 
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2020-07-08, 03:52

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank777 View Post
And if for some reason Apple Silicon can't match graphics on the PC a few years down the road, it will take little effort to revert back to supporting them.
That's not necessarily true. Apple Ax seems to only support a uniform memory architecture. It's possible that the engineering effort for Ax to allow cards that come with their own VRAM is non-trivial.
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PB PM
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2020-07-08, 08:11

The difference between an IGP and a discrete option is more than just clock speed. A big part of the difference is fast dedicated memory (GDDR or HBM2), a solid cooling solution, and more importantly the amount and type of cores. Apple has never had great cooling in their machines, save for the big G series towers and the Mac Pro, so some performance is lost right from the get go.

Apple is likely to go their own way, for better or for worse. We knew this when Metal came out and they started to move away from drivers universally used by industry (OpenGL). That’s fine, people don’t buy Macs for graphically heavy weight stuff like 3D simulations or gaming. Most Mac users want the GPU for compute power for video rendering, and such, which is why going with AMD/ATI has long been a staple of the Mac.
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bassplayinMacFiend
Banging the Bottom End
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2020-07-09, 18:12

If I’m reading the comparison chart in this article correctly, the A12Z GPU is only 6% slower than the GTX 1060 desktop GPU?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-....458470.0.html
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kieran
@kk@pennytucker.social
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2020-07-09, 22:05

I just bought a MBP last summer, but if the first ARM Mac is a new MBP, you can bet I'm going to buy it. (Plus, my wife needs a computer, so that would be an easy sell. Maybe.)

Just seems like this is going to be much more like a combination Mac & iPad and that seems awesome to me.

No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now.
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
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2020-07-10, 12:20

Kuo is always right

… when he's not wrong.

Predicting MacBook Air and 13" MacBook Pro this fall, which is what we've been yammering about. At least the Air part, anyway.

- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)
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Frank777
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2020-07-25, 05:32

According to rumours, FaceID will be coming to Apple Silicon Macs.

I REALLY like the Whoosh camera cover on my iMac. Whether camera-hacking is indeed possible on Macs or not, it's made for a better experience for me.

Not sure I'd want to give that peace-of-mind up for an always-open camera.
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PB PM
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2020-07-25, 08:52

It’s not a question of if it’s possible to hack the camera on a Mac, it has been done. They could even launch it without activating the little green light. I think Apple fixed the known exploit, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others.
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kscherer
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2020-07-26, 22:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
They could even launch it without activating the little green light.
Would have been an older machine. All current Macs (since 2012-ish I think?) have a pass-through electrical circuit for the camera. Electricity to operate the camera first passes through the little green light. With this circuit, the camera cannot function unless the light comes on. On older systems it was a software switch that could be hacked around. Newer systems use a hardware switch, and it cannot be hacked around.

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
I think Apple fixed the known exploit, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others.
The "fix" was in hardware. Thus, any "hack" on newer systems must happen through software, which is the only way to do it. And, yes, there are certainly exploits that exist. But, if you are paying attention to the little green light, then you will know when the camera is on even if it has been "hacked".

- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :)
- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9)

Last edited by kscherer : 2020-07-27 at 14:36.
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PB PM
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2020-07-27, 14:12

Didn’t know, haven’t bought a Mac with a built in camera since 2011. It’s not an issue with my Mac Mini (2012 or 2018).
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bassplayinMacFiend
Banging the Bottom End
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2020-08-04, 09:50

If the camera is only activated long enough to take an image may not activate the LED long enough for you to notice it activating.

I read an article saying this was theoretically possible, but my internet search skills are failing me at the moment. :-(
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chucker
 
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2020-08-04, 10:10

Hmm. Seems like Apple should make it so the LED stays on for like ten seconds. (It does not, in my cursory testing.)
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drewprops
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2020-08-04, 18:35

Electrical tape won't damage your Mac



...
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Frank777
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2020-08-10, 14:52

Now that the last Intel iMac is history, when will we start seeing fan-made Ax iMac renders?
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kayleycun
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2020-08-14, 01:19

I am so excited for this
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chucker
 
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2020-08-14, 03:39

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
Hmm. Seems like Apple should make it so the LED stays on for like ten seconds. (It does not, in my cursory testing.)
Incidentally, though, the new indicators in iOS 14 do this — Control Center will say "Camera" (with a camera icon), then after a few seconds of inactivity, it'll say "Camera, recently".
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